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Monthly Archives: August 2014

Deep Nishar, senior vice-president (products and user experience) at LinkedIn, has announced his exit from the company. He will be joining online real estate marketplace Auction.com in an advisory capacity.

Nishar, who was with LinkedIn for six years, said in a blog post that he would step down from LinkedIn from his full-time role in October, but would continue to serve the company in an advisory capacity.

Nishar, an Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and Harvard Business School alumnus, had joined LinkedIn in 2009 from Google, where he was the senior director of products for the search giant.

Nishar is a significant part of LinkedIn’s growth story, which grew from 30 million subscriber base when he joined to 313 million members worldwide at present. LinkedIn’s annual revenue also grew from under $80 million to $1.5 billion in 2013.

Translating the benefits of this open, interactive marketplace that provides price discovery, transparency, speed and efficiency to a wider population and providing them with the freedom to confidently transact real estate with ease from wherever they are, can only help Auction.com position itself as the leader of this segment for years to come.”

Since its inception in 2007, Auction.com has sold $26 billion in residential and commercial real estate assets. It has about 900 employees and headquarters in Irvine and Silicon Valley with offices in Austin, Plano, Texas, Atlanta, Denver, and Miami.

Nishar is also on board of internet firms TripAdvisor and Opower. He is an investor in multiple Silicon Valley start-ups including Spool (acquired by Facebook in 2012), Adku (acquired by Groupon in 2012) and Aardvark (acquired by Google in 2010). Prior to his work at LinkedIn and Google, Nishar had founded and served as vice-president of products at Patkai Networks.

A sharp increase in use of smartphones has led to a sudden surge in mobile banking transactions — almost four times in a year in value terms. Leading the pack is ICICI Bank, the country’s largest private-sector lender, which has reported a three-fold rise to clock more than Rs 1,000 crore worth of transactions in a month, the first time by a bank in India.

ICICI Bank’s share in the country’s mobile banking payments is the largest. Abonty Banerjee, general manager and head of digital channels, ICICI Bank, says financial transactions on mobile devices is rising steadily. “In the first quarter of this financial year, we have already logged Rs 2,635.37 crore worth of mobile banking transactions, close to half the Rs 5,741 crore seen in full 2013-14. Also, compared with the June quarter of last year, we have almost tripled our value of mobile transactions — from Rs 941 crore to Rs 2,635.37 crore. Similarly, the value for June alone was Rs 1,000 crore, compared with Rs 333.23 crore in the month last year.”

Even other banks have seen significant jump in transactions on the mobile platform. HDFC Bank, India’s second-largest private lender, has also seen its transactions growing about three times — to Rs 795.6 crore in June this year from Rs 266.3 crore in the month last year. Axis Bank witnessed a five-fold increase during the same period — from Rs 115.8 in June 2013 to Rs 586.1 crore. In the month, the total value of mobile transactions across banks grew to Rs 3,985 crore from Rs 1,147 crore a year ago.

Jairam Sridharan, head of consumer lending & payments at Axis Bank, explains mobile banking has now become a core strategy for his bank, which is also investing to grow the overall digital medium base. “To stay relevant among consumers, banks need to focus on the digital medium. It helps works for banks, as they are able to save a lot of transaction cost. It is a win-win for both banks and their consumers.”

While private-sector banks have led the charge in tapping the digital opportunity with better technology, State Bank of India (SBI) is one of the few state-run lenders that have seen meaningful traction.

Experts believe a rise in smartphone usage and improved applications by banks have helped mobile banking gain popularity among users. ICICI Bank’s Banerjee sees the momentum continuing. “The overall transaction value is at least doubling every year. This year, the value has tripled compared to last year. That might not happen on a larger base of the previous year but I am sure it will grow very fast.”

For ICICI Bank, the average value of these transactions is Rs 3,000 per user per month. To grow the mobile banking channel, the lender is planning to offer on mobile phones all services that are currently offered on the web. “At present, there are a few peripheral services that are not on mobile. For instance, services like closing a fixed deposit option is not available on mobile phones. The few services that are left might be offered on mobile in the next six months, we will be able to have all the available services even via mobile phones,” added Banerjee.